Marie de La Vallière
Marie de La Vallière (6th August 1721 - Present) is a Grandelumierian noblewoman. Marie became a Carmalite Nun at the tender age of 16. In the Couvent des Feuillants, Sœur Sainte-Bathilde ''would compose correspondence which revealed her skill as a moraliste, a critic of the contradictions and subterfuges of the human psyche. Her writings focus in particular on virtue theory. She preached theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity; she criticizes the unredeemed cardinal virtues as masks of human pride. Early Life '''Birth' Marie de La Vallière was born on the 6th August 1714, to the Baron and Baronne de La Vallière. She came from a stoutly royalist family, minor nobility from the Touraine. Early Childhood Marie, with one brother two years older, enjoyed a happy if austere childhood at the little manor of La Vallière at Reugny, north-east of Vouvray. Perhaps the chant of the Carmelites next door to her childhood home made a permanent impression upon the sensibilities of Marie. A seventeenth-century young woman of no fortune above the working class could look for a richer household where she would serve in a genteel way. There she would be maintained; there, having formed the vital social connections, she might eventually find a husband. In the case of Marie, her first entry, as has been noted, was into the household of the two younger Blois-Penthievre princesses at the Louvre. Sharing their lives, she was educated, and even more to the point, she was instructed in the royal ways, learning for example the vital art of court dancing. Personality and Appearance Marie had a sweet, submissive character. She was eager to please, eager to obey, all this coupled with a natural modesty which was very much to the contemporary taste in a young woman entering society: the description "a violet hidden in the grass" was applied to her. However, this hidden violet had from her country upbringing a tomboy side: she was a notably good rider, able to control a horse bareback with only a silken cord to guide it. A riding accident in youth had resulted in the fracture of her ankle and she walked with a slight limp, but this did not, it seems, affect her dancing or riding. Nobody ever called Marie beautiful but everyone called her appealing: "the grace more beautiful than beauty". ''Her evident vulnerability - here if ever was the innocent virginity which preachers constantly emphasised as the ideal sate of every young girl. '''Religion' La Vallière underwent a religious change in 1737. After recovering from a serious illness, she made a confession of her sins and returned to the regular practice of the Catholic faith. Persuaded by the morals preached by the Cardinal de Mortemart, La Vallière abandoned the social activities of the court and began to lead a penitential life of prayer and mortification. In her new spiritual reading, La Vallière discovered the works of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, in particular Saint Teresa of Avila’s Path of Perfection, with its ascetical and mystical conception of virtue and beatitude. She confided in the Cardinal de Mortemart about her recent religious vocation. Sœur Sainte-Bathilde La Vallière quietly departed the Louvre for the Couvent des Feuillants. There she took the veil and became known as Sœur Sainte-Bathilde. Sœur Sainte-Bathilde ''lived an exemplary life as a Carmelite nun, noted for the rigor of her penitential practices. In the convent parlor, Soeur Louise occasionally received acquaintances from her previous life: Madame la Princesse, Monsieur le Princes, Empress Marie IV, Mademoiselle de Penthievre and the Duc de Choiseul. Honours, Titles and Styles '''Titles and Styles' * 6th August 1721 - 1737 Her Ladyship, Demoiselle de La Vallière * 1737 - Present Sœur Sainte-Bathilde Category:Grandelumierian Nobility Category:Grandelumierian Clergy Category:House La Valliere Category:18th Century Births